SMAU Milano

November 3rd and 4th. Milan. Two days at SMAU, the Italian fair for innovation, startups and the companies looking for them.

This time I wasn’t walking the floor as a visitor. I was there with EnerNext, as a startup, with something real to show.

Checko’s first fair

A week earlier, Checko went live. SMAU was the first time we brought it out in public, in front of people who had never heard of it.

That’s a different kind of test. A landing page waits for people to come to it. At a fair, you have about thirty seconds before someone decides whether to stop or keep walking. You learn very quickly which sentence makes people stop, and which one makes their eyes glaze over.

For us, it was the simplest one: from the bill to the technical report. Anyone who has ever dealt with an energy audit gets it right away.

Showing the product live, on a laptop, to a stranger who asks hard questions, is the best kind of pressure. Every question was a little piece of feedback we wouldn’t have gotten any other way.

Other startups

The best part wasn’t our stand. It was everyone else’s.

SMAU puts you shoulder to shoulder with dozens of other teams in the same phase as you: building something, shipping it, trying to explain it to the world. Different industries, same problems. Hiring, pricing, finding the first customers, deciding what not to build.

Some of the most useful conversations of the two days were with people who had nothing to do with energy. Founders comparing notes, swapping tools, trading stories about launches that went sideways. It’s reassuring to hear that everyone else is figuring it out as they go too.

Contacts

We came home with a stack of contacts: energy professionals, companies, potential partners, people from other startups, and a few conversations that already feel like the start of something.

Now comes the part that actually matters: following up. A fair is two days. What you do with the contacts afterwards is where the real work happens.

What I’m taking home

A few things I’ll remember from these two days:

• Say it in one sentence. If you can’t explain the product in one line, the stand doesn’t help you.
• Demos beat slides. People believe what they see working.
• Talk to everyone. The best ideas often come from people outside your field.

A product that went live a week ago. Its first trade fair. A team that showed up and talked to everyone who stopped.

Tired feet, full notebook, and a lot of emails to write.

Good week.